Harvard, Columbia rank worst for student free speech in new analysis

• Campus free speech had been on the decline for years, but "the Israel-Palestine issue has gotten people's attention on a huge scale," FIRE president Greg Lukianoff told Axios.

State of play: Several elite university administrations called for the arrests and discipline of pro-Palestinian student protesters.

• Harvard was the lowest ranked school of 251 for the second consecutive year. Columbia and New York University followed with speech climates deemed "abysmal."
• The University of Pennsylvania, Barnard College, Syracuse University and the University of Southern California were considered "very poor."

What they're saying: "More people should be essentially voting with their feet and choosing to send their kids to schools that rank really well on the ranking and not even apply to the ones that don't," Lukianoff said.

• "A lot of the schools that did the worst are some of the wealthiest educational institutions that have ever existed. You have to send them very strong signals that their reputations is really being harmed by their inability to stand up for free speech and academic freedom."
• At Barnard, a faculty committee will develop a framework during the school year that will detail the school's "longstanding commitment to academic freedom, intellectual freedom, and freedom of expression," a college spokesperson said.
• At Columbia, "protests need to be managed effectively and fairly," interim president Katrina Armstrong said during convocation. "That requires holding two truths at once. The truth that our mission depends upon free speech and open debate."

The other side: University administrations for the schools at the top of the list, all public schools, often defended expression rather than punish it, the report said.

• The University of Virginia, Michigan Technological University and Florida State University received "good" speech climate scores.
• The majority viewpoint at the Michigan university is conservative. It is liberal at the other two.

The big picture: 42% of students believe it is only "somewhat" clear that their administration protects free speech.

• 24% said it's "not at all" or "not very" clear.

What they did: FIRE created an overall score for each college with metrics including "comfort expressing ideas," "mean tolerance," "disruptive conduct," "administrative support" and "tolerance difference."

• "The score accounted for the possibility that ideologically homogeneous student bodies may result in a campus that appears to have a strong culture of free expression but is actually hostile to the views of an ideological minority," the report said.
• More than 58,000 students representing more than 250 colleges and universities were surveyed.

By the numbers: 37% of students said the police response to campus encampments makes them feel "very" or "somewhat" unsafe on their own campus.

• 55% of students find it difficult to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on campus — marking a record high for any issue.
• 52% of students reported that blocking other students from attending a campus speech is at least "rarely" acceptable, up from 45% in 2023 and 37% in 2022.
• 32% of students reported that using violence to stop a campus speech is at least "rarely" acceptable, up from 27% in 2023 and 20% in 2022.

Go deeper: Meta oversight board rules pro-Palestinian phrase not hate speech violation